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In 1999 Brian Eno wrote an essay about today's cars

Or, at least there are a lot of parallels

August 19, 2014

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Yesterday, we came across this short essay writen by the artist/musician/producer/genius Brian Eno. It was written about about what was, in 1999, a piece of sophisticated new recording equipment. Reading it, it's difficult not to notice how perfectly it encapsulates a lot of what car enthusiasts are saying about modern cars with regard to complexity, ease of use and their capacity to provide enjoyment.

Even those who endlessely sing the praises of the modern transport appliance car have to admit that the people who can have any car, the richest of the rich, are reserving the big, crazy money for old cars. At Pebble Beach last weekend, we saw a Ferrari 250 GTO roll accross the auction block for $38.1 million. A number of people were dissapointed because it didn't sell for more. Sure, a lot of those guys probably have new cars too, but no one is paying just south of $40 million for a new hypercar, no matter how many batteries it has or what kind of gas mileage it gets.

But it's not just the super-rich who are spurning the new for the old -- even values of once reliably cheap collector cars have been rising to heights that leave many longtime old-car guys shaking their heads.

As Eno notes, the same thing happened with musical instruments. As it turns out, "they don't make them like they used to" is, in some cases, true.